Operating Systems Research Group

Operating Systems Research on Energy, Reliability and Autonomy

Research Statement

As rapid advances in computing hardware have led to dramatic improvement in computer performance, the issues of reliability, availability, maintainability, and cost of ownership are becoming increasingly important. The Opera research group conducts research in operating systems with focuses on power management, autonomic computing, and software reliability and availability.

Our research also involves other disciplinary such as architecture, database, data mining and artificial intelligence. Basically, the theme of our research investigate innovative ideas by exploiting the new features of modern architecture, applying database and data mining solutions and machine learning algorithms to improve system performance, robustness, reliability and manageability.

Recent News

  • [Publication] Nov 2022: Bingyu, Tianyi and YY's paper is accepted by USENIX Security'23.

  • [Publication] Sep 2022: Haochen, Bingyu, Li and YY's paper is accepted by ASPLOS'23.

  • [Publication] Jul 2022: Bingyu, Tianyi and YY's paper is accepted by USENIX Security'23.

  • [Award] Mar 2022: Shan, Soyeon, Eunsoo and YY's paper, Learning from Mistakes (ASPLOS'08), wins ASPLOS Influential Paper Award. This award recognizes historical ASPLOS papers that have had major influence on the field. Congratulations! Read more here and here.

  • [Publication] Sep 2019: Chengcheng, Yudong, Bingyu, Mingyao, Haochen, Tianyin and YY's paper is accepted by CCS'19.

  • [Impact] Oct 2017: YY serves as the program co-chair for SOSP 2019. Come and enjoy the SOSP!

  • [Job] May 2017: Tianyin Xu, Ph.D. 2017, will join University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. Congratulations, Tianyin! Read more here!

  • [Publication] Dec 2016: Tianyin, Han, Le, and YY's paper is accepted by a top HCI conference CHI'17.

  • [Award] Nov 2016: Tianyin, Xinxin, Ryan, Shan, and YY's paper on early detection of configuration errors got Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award at OSDI'16.

  • [Job] June 2016: Peng (Ryan) Huang, Ph.D. 2016, will join Johns Hopkins University as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. Congratulations, Ryan! Read more from here!

  • [Impact] Oct 2015: YY is named the 2015 winner of the ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award, named for the legindary leader of Xerox PARC CSL. It is the highest award given by the operating systems community and is selected for "Contributions that are highly creative, innovative, and possibly high-risk, in keeping with the visionary spirit of Mark Weiser". There is no doubt that YY's work is all of these things and we are honored to work with her. Read more here and here!

  • [Impact] Oct. 2015: YY will give first-hand accounts at SOSP History Day Workshop for "Is achieving security a hopeless quest?"

  • [Alumni] Our own Shan Lu (Ph.D. 2008) is elected as the Vice Chair for ACM SIGOPS for 2015-2018. Congratulations, Shan! Way to go!

  • [Impact] Jul. 2015: YY serves as the program chair for ASPLOS 2016, send in your papers and also come to attend the conference!

  • [Impact] Jul. 2015: YY gives another keynote on "The gap between research and practice" at ISSTA 2015. Check it out!

  • [Publication] Jun. 2015: Tianyin, Long, Xuepeng, and YY's paper is accepted by ESEC/FSE'15. Heading for Lombardy!

  • [Alumni] Mar. 2015, Our alumni, Xiao Ma (Ph.D. 2012) is recoganized as "who embodies Medium engineering values the most." Great job, Xiao; we are so proud of you!

  • [Publication] Feb. 2015: Ryan and YY's paper is accepted by EuroSys'15. Enjoy the wine in Bordeaux!

  • [News] Nov. 2014: YY is named to IEEE Fellow for her "contributions to scalable algorithms and tools for computer reliability." Congratulations, YY!

  • [Publication] Nov. 2014: Xinxin, Soyeon, Tianwei, Rishan, and YY's paper is accepted by HPCA'15.

  • [Impact] Jun. 2014: YY is invited to give two keynotes to talk about why "Machine Learning Solves Only Half of The Puzzle," one for ApSys'14 and one for ICAC'14. Check out here and here.

  • [Publication] Jan. 2014: Peng, Xiao, Dongcai, and YY's paper is accepted by ICSE'14.

  • [News] Dec. 2013: YY is named to ACM Fellow for her "contributions to software reliability and quality." Congratulations, YY! You are so well deserved!

  • [Alumni] Two Opera alumni, Shan Lu (Ph.D. 2008) and Jed Taylor (MS, 2003), received 2013 UIUC-CS Distinguished Alumni Award. Congratulations, Shan and Jed!

  • [Publication] Oct. 2013: Jiaqi, Tianyin, and YY's paper is accepted by ASPLOS'14.

  • [News] Oct. 2013: Opera students and the Whova team built and released a special mobile app for UCSD CSE 25th Anniversary all in just 3 weeks! Check out how "CSE 25th Anniversary Marks Debut to New Mobile App"!

  • [News] Sep 2013: Check out Whova (mobile event app), the best-ever people search engine and social wizard you can find. Whova was founded by OPERA group members based on our research projects!

  • [Publication] Jul. 2013: Tianyin, Jiaqi, Peng, Jing, Tianwei, Ding, and YY's paper is accepted by SOSP'13.

  • [Publication] Dec. 2012: Xiao, Peng, Xinxin, Pei, Soyeon, Dongcai, YY, Lawrence, and Geoffrey's paper is accepted by NSDI'13.

  • [Press] Aug 2012: PatternInsight's Log Insight product and the team is acquired by VMware. PatternInsight is a spin off from our research group and was started based on research from our group. See the list of news coverage here.

  • [Job] July 2012: Report on job searches of our two doctor and soon-to-be-doctor from the Opera group:

    • Zuoning Yin, Ph.D. 2011, will join Coverity.

    • Ding Yuan, Ph.D. 2012, will join U. of Toronto as an assistant professor.

  • [Publication] Jul. 2012: Ding, Soyeon, Ryan, Robert, Michael, Xiaoming, YY and Stefan's paper is accepted by OSDI'12. We also released the dataset we used in this paper.

  • [Publication] Jan. 2012: Ding, Soyeon and YY's log characteristics study is accepted by ICSE'12.

  • [Impact] The LogEnhancer team is invited to the panel discussion ''Assessing and improving the quality of program logs'' in the SLAML workshop 2011. Ding will speak in the panel.

  • [Award] Our proposal of "GPU and Cloud-based Next Generation Cancer Radiotherapy Treatment Planning" won the Accessible and Affordable Care at Heart of Healthcare Technology Grant. We are one of the 5 winner teams chosen from 64 applicants from 10 Southern California institutions.

  • [Award] Zuoning, Ding and YY's paper on characterizing incorrect fixes got ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award.

  • [Publication] Aug. 2011: Shan, Soyeon and YY's paper is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS).

  • [Publication] Aug. 2011: Jiaqi, Weiwei, Robert, Soyeon and YY's ATDetector paper is accepted by MICRO'11.

  • [Publication] Jun. 2011: Zuoning, Xiao, Jing and YY's paper on configuration error study is accepted by SOSP'11

  • [Publication] May. 2011: Zuoning, Ding and YY's paper on characterizing incorrect fixes is accepted by FSE'11.

  • [Award] Ding Yuan, Soyeon Park, Jing Zheng, YY and Stefan's LogEnhancer (ASPLOS'11) was nominated for best papers and also was selected to fast forward to ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (ACM-TOCS) for Special Issues on Best Papers from ASPLOS'11.

  • [Impact] Weiwei got invited to give a talk on our SyncFinder (OSDI'10) on the Linux Plumbers Conference 2011.

  • [Impact] YY was invited to give a keynote at the 8th Workshop on Mining Software Repositories (MSR'11) colocated with ICSE'11.

  • [Publication] There are three papers at ASPLOS'11 from Opera group and alumni (Shan Lu and Feng Qin).

  • [Service] YY is chairing APSys'11, an initiative for Asian-Pacific System Research.

  • [Impact] YY did a show about parallel programming in Intel Software Technology Network TV.

  • [Alumni] Shan Lu, our Ph.D opera alumni who graduated in 2008 and is now an assistant professor at Univ of Wisconsin-Madison, has recently got NSF career award 2011, a very selective, prestigious award for young faculty in US. This marks our second opera alumni getting this award. Feng Qin (Ph.D from opera in 2006 and now faculty at Ohio-State) got this award in 2010. Congratulations, Shan!

  • [Publication] Oct 2010: Ding, Jing, Soyeon and YY's LogEnhancer paper is accepted by ASPLOS'11.

  • [Publication] Jul. 2010: Weiwei, Soyeon, Jiaqi and YY's SyncFinder paper is accepted by OSDI'10.

  • [Publication] May. 2010: Yao Shi, Soyeon, Zuoning, Shan and YY's DefUse paper is accepted by OOPSLA'10.

  • [Job] May. 2010: Jing Zheng will go to NetApp Advanced Technology Group for summer internship (Summer 2010)

  • [Talk] Sept 2010: YY is invited to give a talk on Resilience and Fault-tolerance in clouds at America National Academy of Engineering(NAE) Frontier of Engineering Symposium.

  • [News] YY is invited to serve on the board of CRA-W

  • [Alumni] 2010: Our Alumnus and now a faculty at Ohio-State University, Dr. Feng Qin, is recommended by NSF to receive the NSF Career Award.

  • [Press] Jan 2010: Our research collaboration with NetApp has made to new post on SearchStorage.

  • [Publication] Nov. 2009: Ding, Haohui, Weiwei, Lin and YY's paper is accepted to ASPLOS'10.

  • [Job] Oct. 2009: Lin Tan, Ph.D. 2009, will join U. of Waterloo as an assistant professor

  • [Publication] Aug. 2009: Soyeon, Weiwei, Zuoning, Rini, Kyu, Shan and YY's paper is accepted to SOSP'09.

  • [Publication] Nov. 2008: Lin and Yoann's comment characteristics study paper is accepted to ICSE'09.

  • [Publication] Nov. 2008: We have two papers accepted to ASPLOS'09. Congratulations to Soyeon and Shan for their concurrency testing paper, Joe and Weiwei for their delta execution paper, and all other authors.

  • [Publication] Nov. 2008: Weihang, Chongfeng, and Zhenmin's paper is accepted to FAST'09.

  • [Job] July 2008: Report on job searches of our three soon-to-be-doctors from the Opera group:

  • [Publication] April 2008: Lin, Xiao, and Weiwei's paper, AutoISES, is accepted to USENIX Security'08!

  • [Press] Feb 2008: Our research on storage system failure has made to several news posts:

  • [Jan 2008]: Check out Pattern Insight, which is founded by OPERA group members based on our research projects.

  • [Publication] Dec 2007, Ding, Kyuhyung, Gopal, Zhenmin, Xiao, YY and Jiawei's paper is accepted by SDM'08!

  • [Publication] Nov 2007, Weihang, Chongfeng's paper is accepted by FAST'08!

  • [Publication] Oct 2007, Shan, Soyeon, Eunsoo's paper is accepted by ASPLOS'08!

  • [Publication] Jun 2007, we have three papers accepted by SOSP '07, one of the best conferences in operating systems. Congratulations to Lin for iComment, Shan for MUVI, Joe for Triage and all other authors!

  • [Publication] Mar 2007, YY, Darko, William, Craig, Marcelo, Steven, Ryan and Joe' paper is accepted by HotDep '07.

  • [Publication] Mar 2007, Lin and Ding's paper is accepted by HotOS '07.

  • [Publication] Dec 2006, Joe, Shan, Spiros' paper (collaborated with CMU) is accepted by EuroSys'07, a top conference in operating systems.

  • [Publication] Nov 2006, Shan, Joe and Feng's AVIO (published in ASPLOS'06) is selected into IEEE Micro Special Issue on Top Picks from Architecture Conferences, 2006 based on significance and relevance to Industry. Only 11 papers are selected!

  • [Funding] Oct 2006, NetApp has provided our group a $40,000 Gift grant to collaborate on system mining.

  • [Publication] Sept 2006, Pin's HARD paper is accepted into HPCA'07, a top conference in Computer Architecture.

  • [Promotion] August 2006: YY is promoted to a tenured associate Professor 2 years earlier than scheduled!

  • [Publication] August 2006: the TWO papers we submitted to Micro'06, a top-tier conference in computer architecture, are all accepted! Congratulations to Shan Lu, Pin Zhou, Feng Qin and Zhenmin Li!

  • [Funding] July 2006: YY just obtained another grant from NSF on a collaboration project with NC-State and Penn State on high performance I/Os.

  • [Funding] July 2006, Motorola has provide us a 3-year grant to work on software reliability

  • [Press] July 2006: Our research on software reliability has made to several news posts:

  • [Funding] June 2006: YY got a new NSF grant on storage systems jointly with professors from NC-State and Penn-State for 3 years.

  • [Job]May 2006: Report on job searches of our three soon-to-be-doctors from the Opera group:

    • Feng Qin, will join Ohio-State University as an assistant professor in the CS department this coming Fall (Fall 2006)

    • Zhenmin Li, have accepted the offer from IBM Almaden Research Lab

    • Pin Zhou, is still deciding between an assistant professor position at Waterloo University and industrial research labs

  • [Publication]May 2006: Shan, Joe and Feng's AVIO paper on atomicity violation detection has been accepted into the International Conference of Architecture Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), a flagship conference (held only once every two years) in multi-disciplinary research between architecture, operating system and compiler/program language.

  • [Funding] May 2006: A NSF proposal led by Yuanyuan (YY) with three other faculty (Craig Zilles, Darko Marinov, Bill Sanders) got funded with $750K for 3 years!

  • [Funding] May 2006: Yuanyuan (YY)'s two Intel grants will be renewed for the next year!

  • [Job]Apr 2006: Lin Tan and Weihang Jiang will, respectively, go to Microsoft Research Redmond and HP Labs for their summer internships (summer 2006)

  • [Funding] Mar 2006: Yuanyuan(YY) has got one new NSF grant to work on power management for data servers

  • [Publication]Oct 2005: Feng Qin and Joe's paper "Rx" was selected as one of the five awarded paper at SOSP'05 and is fast forwarded to ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (ACM-TOCS) Special Issues on Best papers from SOSP-2005.

  • [Publication] August 2005: We have 2 papers into SOSP'05! Feng and Joe's paper "Rx" and Qingbo, Zhifeng and Lin's paper "Hibernator" have been accepted by ACM's SOSP 2005, the best conference on operating systems. This time, only 20 papers are accepted from 155 submissions, with a 13% acceptance rate

  • [Publication] July 2005: Zhenmin's PR-Miner paper is accepted by FSE (ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Foundation of Software Engineering) of 2005, one of the best conferences in software engineering

  • [Job] May 2005: Four members from our group, Feng, Vivek, Shan and Joe, will spend their summers as interns working at Microsoft Research Labs, Intel Labs and IBM Almaden Lab, respectively.

  • [Funding] May 2005: Yuanyuan(YY) got the DOE Early career award, which will provide her $300K for 3 years to support her research

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Funding

  • NSF HECURA grant on I/O (2006-2009)

  • NSF CNS grant on reliability (2006-2009)

  • NSF CCF grant on power management (2006-2009)

  • 2 Intel gift grants (2005-2008)

  • DOE Early Career Award (2005-2008)

  • Microsoft grant (2005-2006)

  • NSF Career Award (2004-2009)

  • IBM Faculty Award (2004, 2005)

  • NSF CCR (single-PI) 2003-2004

  • NSF Small-ITR (with Prof. Adve) 2003-2006

  • NSF Medium-ITR (with Prof. Torrelas, Prof. Han, Prof. Midkiff) 2004-2008

  • IBM Shared University Research (SUR) Equipment Award

  • IBM CAS Fellowship (2003, 2004)

  • Intel Equipment Donation